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Sunday, November 27, 2011

This was fun. I had an opportunity to make cookies for a girl baby shower for my friend. I love girly stuff. I love pink. My favorite this time was the pregnant mom. I told my daughter, Mellissa, that I wanted to make her wearing a dress and boots instead of a long shirt and pants. She came over and drew around my cookie cutter and then designed the cookie for me. She is amazing. I adore my baby girl. Here's the fun girly baby shower cookies.

My other favorite is the baby playing peek-a-boo. Last time I made a boy wearing pajamas and this time I made a girl with a cute diaper. This was harder than I expected. Trying to determine where to draw the legs was difficult and I had to scrape it off a couple times before getting the design I wanted.

And another minor change, I made my baby face cookie with a cute little pink bow instead of hair. I love how these came out.

I love this stork cutter from CopperGifts.com. He's pretty break-able, but such a fun design

Pink baby bottle with brown trim and a sparkly sucker

And now it's time to start working on Christmas cookies. Would you believe that I still have a few Thanksgiving cookie designs that I didn't finish?

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends. My son, Nick, went to a friend's house for 1 1/2 days. I didn't like him not being home. I'm not going to do very well when he goes away to college! Thankfully the next day, he had the friends come to our house instead. I like that better :-) and we have lots of cookies!

Saturday, November 26, 2011

My son and all his friends grew a mustache this month for Movember. So I joined in by making cookies - surprised? An opportunity to make cookies - I'm on it! ;-) These cookie cutters came from CheapCookieCutters.com The box comes with 5 different styles of mustache cookie cutters.

Since my son is light-haired, his mustache didn't show up very well, so I helped him out by putting a stick in the cookies so these could be his official mustache ;-)

What is Movember all about? Movember Meaning: November is the Movember month. During Movember each year, thousands of men in the US and around the world grow mustaches to raise funds and awareness for men's health, specifically about prostate Cancer and about other Cancers that affect men. So what is Movember all about? It's an opportunity for everyone to help raise awareness and donations for charities that support the fight against Cancer. Since I lost my father to Cancer, our family has supported the LiveStrong foundation through the LiveStrong Challenge every year: Lance Armstrong Foundation.

And yes, I even got involved just a bit too!

I hope you all had a BLESSED Thanksgiving. We have been truly blessed. We've been holding out hope that Nick would receive a merit scholarship to one of his top college choices. He received the acceptance letter a couple weeks ago, but without a merit scholarship, we would have had to tell Nick that we can't afford for him to go there. The scholarship arrived yesterday!!! It is so exciting to see all the years of hard work, staying focused on grades, community service, 10 years in scouting, 11 years in karate and other extracurricular activities has paid off in helping Nick to become the young man that he was meant to be. God is GOOD!

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

I wanted to make scarecrow cookies for Thanksgiving. I thought I could make a scarecrow out of a clown, but it turned out that my specific clown cookie cutter wouldn't work as a scarecrow. Imagine Bozo hair and you might be able to see that it just wasn't going to work. Okay, so I ordered a new cookie cutter that I knew would work, but now it was getting very close to Thanksgiving and I figured it wouldn't arrive in time. I was right. Then an idea came to me...

I have that great turkey head cookie cutter that I absolutely love from CopperGifts.com. Why not try to make it into a scarecrow too and double love it! I followed SugarBelle's tutorial for the face of the scarecrow. I used coral luster dust for his cheeks. I tried different colors of straw, but decided I liked the gold best. Thankfully it worked like a charm and my obsession for a scarecrow cookie is filled now ;-)

I also had been wanting to add maize corn to my Thanksgiving to do list and finally got a chance to make those. This corn cutter was one of my favorites this year for Thanksgiving.

I also added a little more detail to my pumpkin pie cookies. This was a brand new cutter for me for Thanksgiving and I absolutely love it. This one is from eCrandal.com.

Turkeys made from a seashell. I just love this one and how brightly colored he is.

More turkeys because of course you have to have 3 styles of turkeys right? ;-)

Drumsticks

Apples

Acorns

Squirrels

Leaves - my friend, Vic, asked me to make burgundy leaves so these are mostly burgundy with lots of other colors swirled within the leaf

Pies

Pumpkin - yes it's huge, I like big cookies

Pilgrim hat made from my cowboy hat cookie cutter

and a cherry pie too

My friend, Al Bacosa of Bacosa Photography took this amazing photo of my son yesterday. I told him that he recently finished his Eagle Scout project and every time I try to get a photo of him in his scout uniform, it comes out horrible. Look what he did for us. I'm so blessed! If you need a photographer in the San Jose area, you can't go wrong with Al. He is amazing!

Sunday, November 20, 2011

It's finally time for Thanksgiving cookies. I will also be baking MORE Thanksgiving cookies today, making my house smell super yummy and feeling all warm and cozy inside while it's really cold and windy outside. My son has already received 4 college acceptance letters and 2 with good scholarships and 1 with an amazing merit scholarship. We have MUCH to be thankful for this Thanksgiving! Our 2 grown daughters are both doing extremely well and happy and working hard. Hubby is doing well, although work is slow with the difficult economy, but we know God is watching over us.

What are you MOST thankful for at this time of year? Leave me a comment on this blog and tell me what you are most thankful for. I am blessed and have many things to be thankful for (children, home, family, the things I've learned and grown from, the things I've overcome and become stronger for), but at this time of year, the thing I feel most thankful for is that God chose me to be the child of my parents. I miss my dad every single day, but I'm so incredibly thankful for our time together and to have been his daughter. My mother continues to love me and be supportive of me and always be there for me. Being their daughter has shown me that God loves me. I hope to always show that kind of love and devotion to my own children.

Thanksgiving cookies

These turkeys were designed from Susan at The Painted Cookie. I love this cookie cutter from CopperGifts.com and today I plan on using it for a very different purpose. Stay tuned :-)

I made this turkey using a seashell cookie cutter. I think it's one of my new favorites. I love all the colors. Too bad there isn't any pink though ;-)

Sorry for the bad photos. I need to take a few lessons in photography and invest in a really good camera. They are insanely expensive though, so these pictures will have to do. Unfortunately on overcast days or at night, the photos just don't come out very well. Turkeys...

Corn on the cob. I love these. Since I use glaze icing, it's difficult to get definition, but I iced a bunch of the corn pieces and then came back and iced a few more and then back again and iced some more. I love the way each kernel stands out. It was worth the hassle and time.

Slices of pumpkin pie. I wanted a very specific pie cutter and so I ordered one special from eCrandal.com. I really wanted the curly edge and a nice large slice of pie. My hubby loves pumpkin pie, so this one is key ;-)

and then for those that want to eat an entire pie instead of a slice ;-)

I made this pilgrim hat out of a cowboy hat. I just cut off the top part that wasn't straight.

And drumsticks. Last year I hand-cut these and it was a royal pain. I am not talented in the ways of hand-cutting cookies. Thankfully, CopperGifts.com came out with one this year, so of course, I snatched it up!

and I was really wanting to make a pumpkin again after Halloween. This time I iced sections of the pumpkin at a time to give those lines of definition. Hubby even thought it looked cool.

I love this apple cutter because it's huge and then those little apple cores, I bought from CheapCookieCutters.com. I saw that LilaLoa made apple cores a while back and I thought they were so cute that they made me smile. Thanks for the inspiration Georganne!

So many people are obsessed with owls. I thought they seemed like a very Fall cookie, so I made some. I think I'd become owl obsessed too if I had a cookie cutter that I like. I haven't found one yet. They all seem to small and narrow. I'll keep looking. I want one with a big enough section for huge, fun eyes :-)

and my Fall cookies too

More Thanksgiving cookies being baked today and more baby shower cookies too. Don't forget to leave me a comment with what you are MOST thankful for this Thanksgiving. Come on... I shared. It's only fair ;-)